Among the many legendary bits of wisdom bestowed upon the public by Sex and the City, one of the most enduring was the idea that it is permissible to take half as long as a relationship lasted to get over it. But what if you don’t?

Tom Hiddleston and Taylor Swift pictures: as close as we'll get to two memes dating

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When photos surfaced yesterday of Taylor Swift and Tom Hiddleston kissing on a rocky coastline in Rhode Island, the internet erupted in feverish accusations that Swift had moved on from her relationship with Calvin Harris too, well, swiftly.

“New couple alert!” the tabloids declared because, as we all know, if you kiss a boy by the seaside it automatically makes him your betrothed, in accordance with the ancient maritime laws governing romance and coitus. “Well, that was quick,” opened the report from the Los Angeles Times on the new pairing, and Twitter echoed the sentiment that this rebound happened very quickly.

But there were rumors as early as October 2015 that a split was imminent, and in January, gossip blogs claimed she was seeking advice from friends over text (celebrities, they’re just like us!). So why is it so hard for us to consider the possibility that this relationship was over long before the couple took to their respective social media accounts to make their courteous announcements?

When there is a break-up in our immediate vicinity, we are more likely to see the telltale signs or be privy to information about the upcoming split. When someone whose public life is so impossibly well-curated for our consumption (like Swift’s) has a break-up, we feel blindsided, betrayed even. Compounded by the fact that we didn’t see the break-up coming, we have come to expect Swift to be heartbroken as part of her brand. When she bounces back happy and ready to smooch another reasonably bland famous man on the beach, we are left to wonder whether or not we will get a decent track out of this whole affair. We expect Taylor Swift to be crushed. We expect her to be overwhelmed. We expect her to wait, and wallow and hopefully write the song of the summer.

We have come to expect Swift to be heartbroken as part of her brand

But you don’t have to be T-Swift to be judged on how quickly you move on.

Our expectations of relationship recovery are highly gendered when it comes to hetero pairings. Men are supposed to get blitzed and “rebound” with a bunch of women with whom they have no intention of committing to before crashing and burning when the devastation of their loss eventually hits. Women are supposed to watch romantic movies while crying into pints of ice cream before somehow emerging alive despite not having a partner some considerable time later. Both have to reluctantly rejoin Tinder and try not to talk about the last relationship too much, lest they scare off their potential new partner. But under no circumstances should anyone be less than a month out of a relationship and happily into another one.

Tom Hiddleston and Taylor Swift at the Met gala in New York on 2 May 2016. Photograph: BFA/Rex/Shutterstock

There is a Goldilocks rule when it comes to these grace periods. Bouncing back from a relationship quickly and immediately getting into another is considered callous, but mourning a relationship for too long is considered worrisome. When women rebound in the same fashion as men, they are often judged as desperate, obviously faking their elation at being single because being paired off is a woman’s ultimate goal and social obligation. We like our young female celebrities just a little bit sullen for just long enough after a break-up to keep us from getting bored. Taylor Swift’s relationships have long been the currency of her career and perhaps she’s tired of the cycle of heartbreak and songwriting and just wants to make out on some rocks.

More than anything, the debacle is a stark reminder that we don’t actually know celebrities nearly as well as we think we do. Swift’s cats might appear on our Instagram feeds alongside the cats of our own friends but she is not actually our friend. We don’t know the extent to which she was already checked out of her relationship with Harris. We don’t know if, despite his vanilla public persona, Harris is actually a real asshole whose ex deserves a fun and quick rebound from his misery. What we do know is that if Taylor actually waited the six months or more it would take to mourn the break-up for half the duration of the actual relationship, we’d recast her as the pathetic sadsack who couldn’t catch a man with a net. And Taylor’s already too gracefully rebounded from that reputation to go back now.